YMCA Twin Cities Takes a Next-Gen Approach to Data Loss Protection

5 min Read

Chris Niesen

The Y connects with youth, adults, families and
seniors of all backgrounds to explore and enjoy opportunities to learn, grow
and thrive. In order to strengthen the community, which is our cause, it’s
important that we make it easy for our employees and volunteers to do their
work in supporting our programs and services — and data security plays a
vital role.

The importance of data security for
us lies in our ability to keep our data safe while enabling our users to get their jobs done efficiently and fast, without hindering
what they’re trying to do. If our users aren’t able to access their data, it
impedes their ability to accomplish the mission of the YMCA of the Greater Twin
Cities. Specifically, data loss means time wasted in redoing work; it means time spent
researching where that data went; it means determining whether that data movement created a new risk
for the organization; and ultimately, it means
not being able to serve our community so all can thrive.

People want to embrace technology and expect that
it will allow them to get their jobs done quicker. As a security director, it
is my responsibility to layer in security in a way that enables employees to
use technology the way they want to. That’s critical, because if we don’t,
they’ll stop using the organization sponsored technology entirely. Providing
for this flexibility requires strong governance, and faster detection and
response to data loss incidents.

I don’t think traditional data loss prevention (DLP) works. Policy sets with traditional DLP are hard to tune, and it takes months or maybe even a year or two to get to the point where you can enforce policy rather than just monitor. I am not willing to accept the risk associated with imperfect policies, resulting in blind spots. Instead, to enhance the security of the YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities, I prioritize faster detection and response.

When our existing DLP solution was
due for an upgrade, we took a cloud-first approach to looking for a
replacement. We also wanted to get away from the burden that traditional DLP
places on user productivity when policies block the movement of data for
legitimate workflows. Considering this,
we found that it made sense fiscally, strategically and technologically, to
replace our legacy DLP solution with Code42 Next-Gen Data Loss Protection.

Code42 Next-Gen Data Loss Protection gives us the visibility we need across our endpoints and cloud applications — visibility that I haven’t had through other tools. We can create alerts to help us find any data exfiltration attempts so we can quickly take action, in the event of insider threats. It also helps us detect, respond and recover should there be an incident where a departing employee takes data.

And,
we were able to replace more than 10 on-premise servers with a cloud
deployment, bringing financial savings. Code42 Next-Gen Data Loss Protection accelerates
our detection and response to data loss and leak, at a fraction of the cost of
alternatives, all without impeding users from accomplishing the YMCA of the
Greater Twin Cities’ mission.

From advocacy to aquatics, child care to camps, mentoring to multicultural experiences, sports to safe spaces, water safety to wellness, the Y strengthens the community with life-changing programs and services. With Code42, we’ve been able to advance our data security program to support these efforts.

New to Code42?

As the director of security at YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities, Chris is responsible for all security related areas relating to technological and physical security. Chris joined the YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities in 2018, bringing experience from the education, manufacturing, healthcare and consulting industries.

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